Benie's Games Blog

WOO SHOCKFEST!! How I missed thee. I missed the fun we had. So many lightning strikes, death by -k, mixed up tags, and tricking samyankeesfan into thinking he was a Mod.
This day… it wasn’t anything like ShockFest 2013. Chief wasn’t on (again). All of our tags were changed to [Admin], and we had /shock, /smite, and /thor. But it just didn’t feel the same as hearing someone raging over being killed 10+ times by lightning. It was a watered down version of the glory that was ShockFest, due to having Essentials instead of CommandBook.

There was an added twist this year, though. Central Park was locked in Survival. Anyone caught in the park when the “bombs fell” was shocked to death. This was the only way to make someone rage. However, simply using /shock or /smite, didn’t kill the player. You have to use /shock <player> [damage] (and hope to catch him or her in the park).

But there was also something that pissed me off as much as a certain member having hacked weapons that can one hit kill you even with full Diamond armor(who claims was doing it because of April Fools. I call BS), and that’s the fact Mods and Admins were immune to being killed. Yet they have to be fun haters and tell us to stop if we go overboard.
Either they were told by the other Admins to do this, or weren’t informed at all. Though I remember back in 2013, we were told what would be done. Never was to “keep it under control”, part of it. They should had known what members are capable of doing.
Also, they’re all “If you all don’t stop, we’re going to issue out kicks and warns and throw you in jail.” Wow. They have no access to the console. Just how are they going to catch the ones that spam, when it doesn’t show who shocked who? Every shock is silent. And Robin’s all “I’ll know who” like the elitist badass he is.
Yet Robin before, he really liked the fact ShockFest was back. But hnties, he was the problem. He’s never attended ShockFest, and the chaos that it came with. It’s supposed to be spammy. Shock spam is funny(when used on this day)! I assume he told Robin how much he hated this in Staff Chat, and Robin was forced to get on his big boy pants and enforce the rules. Because, even robin agreed before, that this was a lame, dumbed down version of ShockFest.

Here. Let me compare ShockFest 2013, to now;
ShockFest 2013…
-Had /shock. Where you can kill a player(even in Creative), multi-shock, and silent shock. What pissed people off, is they could lose their books and stuff.
-Tags were switched around. I believe I was a ‘[Mayor]’ instead of a Mod. Had a lot of fun April Fooling eachother.
-You can kick people off the server in hilarious ways.

ShockFest 2015…
-Had /shock, /smite, and /thor. Every single one was a silent, single shock. You couldn’t kill other players unless they were in Survival.
-Tags were all switched to [Admin]. It only fooled a small handful. There was one that came on as a [Trustee+] for some odd reason.
-You can’t kick people off the server. That removed some of the fun.
-Central Park was a Survival-locked area.
-Admins had their names masked behind strange names. Like Frumple’s is ‘Frodo_Baggins’. You can tell it’s an Admin(or Frumple) with the ‘*’ tag before the name.
-Even Frumple had an Admin tag.

I just didn’t like it. It just wasn’t the fun and the chaos I loved about ShockFest. It was controlled. It was watered down. It was lame. I assume that’s why Frumple agreed to this.
I blame Boss, and I don’t think I’m alone. He’s the one that killed the joy of ShockFest, when he wanted me to kick everyone off the server (including Frumple) as a joke.

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EDIT: Well.. I just learned that Frumple did NOT authorize this. And this may not even be Chief that did it. Yay! Drama bomb! A ShockFest that wasn’t even supposed to happen! Great…
Well, Frumple’s currently getting our tags back to normal after blocking access to Admin shocking commands. This is quite interesting, especially that I learned how Music3_0 got banned from the server, less than a week ago. Could this had been an attempt at revenge (of hacking into one of the Admins’ accounts to gain access and enable these changes)?
Yet, why would he just stop there? He would’ve been able to shut the server down completely. That’s why I feel it just can’t be true.

Obviously it’s Chief. He’s the one that did ShockFest 2013. Yet for him not to ask Frumple is kind of… both bad and confusing. On one hand, you don’t just do your own thing infront of the owner of the server. And on the other hand, I really doubt Chief would deliberately go behind Frumple’s back to do this.
*shrug* I dunno. I guess time will tell, and if the Admins and Frumple decide to take the time and tell us on the website or not. That is, if they feel they should. Or they’ll just fall back to their (very annoying) “it’s not a big deal” thing.

I don’t know how many times I’ve re-wrote this post, yet only published it once. Three so far? Maybe four? So, being my 16th re-write, it’s time to finally stop updating and actually say something about this game, and me getting into it.

As you all know, I have a serious inability to think of plans. And the very thought of asking for help sends me into a deep depression (if not knowing how to run this shit excuse for a town(who pretends to be a big city) didn’t).

I got several mods running. Sadly, using even one mod disables achievements. So, I have no achievements of this game. Not even the “Build your first city” one. But.. meh. Fuck achievements when I have infinite money!
Been told “Eh, you won’t learn anything if you cheat”. I don’t play games to learn, I play them for fun. Yet you can say “but it’s a game that’s supposed to be challenging. That’s fun! That’s why you learn! It’s fun!”
And I… I can show you what’s ‘fun’ with you’re on the receiving end of a Greatsword in Guild Wars 2. Yeah, I do know how to use one. Very deadly…

Right! So. Sorry about that. Got a bit carried away there. Where was I? .. Oh yes. Mods. As I said before, I got several mods (including one to shut up Chirper). Which got me the courage to go on and try to do my first city in this game.
I decided to go with a grid-based design, as grid-based cities are easy to build. Yet they become a traffic nightmare later on. Thankfully for me, there’s even a mod that I can toggle traffic lights on and off for specific intersections (which is all of them).

I managed to buy all the land plots ’till I had them all, including the one locking the ugly excuse for a Semi-Directional T. No offense to Europe. I destroyed it, and after a few screaming episodes, I finally got an OK looking diamond interchange.
There is one someone already made, but I can’t place it down due to the terrain. Which is why I was forced to make a custom interchange.

So anyway, I noticed there was Fertile land (according to the Natural Resources filter) a bit of a distance away from the interstate. I thought “Hey! Let’s set up farmland there! Get me some Industrial farmland!”
I also saw a large patch of Oil, and Forest. So I thought of having three separate Industrial areas; one for all three resources in the game. But decided to start with the Farmland one first.
I slapped the roads down, got water pumps and filters going. Then started planning the actual town. I wanted to do something similar to what Dan did, but have a one way road going through the Residential area. Yet the more I thought about it, I just didn’t like that.
Not long, I started seeing houses pop up in my fledgling town. Yet I wasn’t seeing cars and people. Figured out that all One Way roads are required to be connected. After that, cars and people started popping up in droves. Before I realized, I had 600 people living in my city.
That number has grown to a maximum of 8,350 people. Not too bad. And people still wanted more Residential… this is where things started to turn bad. My brain.. “Uhhh.. how do I make this look good?! DAMNIT!! FUCK THIS! Just.. don’t mess with it!”
My farming Industry started to bitch at me for not having enough workers. Then my Commercial district bitched at me for not having enough workers and customers.

I decided to just try to play smart for awhile, and lower how much space I have zoned. I mean, surely this would balance things out, right? That was until I started seeing a line of hearse’s enter my city, due to half of my population dying of failure flu. They got it from my bad city planning. And it wasn’t because of my road system. Hell, at least that, I actually did good (with that mod that disables traffic lights)!
And now my population is slowly but steadily dropping… probably because they can’t handle the fail anymore. Well, they shouldn’t of fucking moved into my city and expect me to fucking know what the fuck to do!! IT IS CALLED ‘FAILVILLE’ FOR A REASON!!!

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Later I learned it wasn’t that, but a thing where the game literally punishes you for building too much Residential, too quickly. By having mass deaths, which causes hearses to clog the roads, leading to more people leaving because the dead aren’t being picked up. Then you got buildings randomly burning down as the fire department can’t reach them due to the congestion caused by the hearses, and then the town stinking due to garbage trucks unable to pick the trash up, because.. well, you get the idea. It just goes south… so fucking FAST.

But as I said before, the mod that disables traffic lights, really helps debunk the punishment. I have had several issues with traffic jams, but either I manage to figure out how find a way, or the clog takes care of itself overtime. Though I still have it where 1/3 of my citizens either randomly die or leave the town. And another mod I got is also helping with said punishment. It keeps buildings from being abandoned due to them moving out. This allows me to focus on the basic needs of my citizens.
They still bitch at me with their flashing “We need workers/customers/land value!! Waah waah waah!” icons that appear over their buildings. But I now know, the game can’t do anything to me about it.

I can’t fail. I can’t run out of money. I may run out of citizens, or have all of my Industry ‘leaving’ me due to no people wanting to work (because either they don’t want to drive that far or they’re too educated to wanna do that job)…, but neither thing is a “YOU’RE FIRED!!!” scenario. I’m literally immortal.
Knowing this, it does save my sanity a bit.

The only thing I personally got to “worry” about, is how to plan the rest of the town and actually turn it into a city. Already, I replaced some of my Low Residential and Commercial for High, due to the high land value. This is how you get fucking skyscrapers.

I played this game back in… 2010, I think? It’s been a long time. Was introduced by a friend.
This is a first person co-op zombie survival game, made pretty much for kicking zombie ass with your friends. But it does have Single Player. It’s also a round-based game, where you’re given such and such time to survive these horrors. You get money for killing zombies. If you and your team survives, you got a grace period between rounds, where you’re told to ‘come get your shiny guns” from a trader. Also, you have less than a minute to reach the trader, then buy new weapons/ammo/etc before the store closes for another round.

The more rounds you survive, the harder the zombies are to kill. You even have ones that fire rockets at you, have a chainsaw for a hand, or even one that takes an insane amount of bullets to bring down. Why it’s important to get better guns. Just remember to buy them quickly.
And that’s basically all there is. If I remember from back then, you aren’t given AI teammates when doing Solo play. Even though you’re listed as a “squad”.

There was a reason I never bought this game, and sadly I’m reminded of it. Even though the price when it was on sale, was something I just couldn’t turn down. So, if you think you can play this well in Single Player, by all means. Try. But you’ll be the only member in your “squad”. And it can get pretty insane at times with endless waves of zombies.
Oh yeah, and ammo is scarce in some levels.

Twiddling my thumbs like I usually do, when I’m bored and don’t know what game to play. It would be Guild Wars 2, but with the whole “game is designed for team play” thing… meh.
Anyway, I’ve been getting back to watching Dan’s videos. There’s a game that he’s been really saying to get it, and he actually means it. And he’s not the only one. This game has a lot of good reviews.
It’s called Cities: Skylines. It’s not to be confused with Cities XXL, which is another completely different game. Skylines is from the makers of the Cities in Motion series, a series that Frumple likes (mostly because of the buses).

Watching the video that Dan made (and other videos about the game), I noticed one major thing I had against the Sim City series (I started back in Sim City 3000 Unlimited), was gone. And that was the major nagging from all of your city planners; especially your financial planner. He really annoyed the fuck out of me. Constantly with “this will be a huge windfall for your city” if I get this building that just suddenly popped up. And of course the “Your residences need more power/water/police/schools”.. blah blah blah…

This game… this game, allows you to turn off that annoying crap, and focus on building your city YOUR way! You see what your residences want with three bars, instead of several city planners. There’s a little thing called “Chirper” (similar to Twitter. Even has @’s and #’s. #SoCopied), where your residences can tweet to their Mayor of how they like nor dislike your city. You can even turn this off, as it does get annoying.
Unlike Sim City 3000, where you have low/medium/high density zoning, it’s a lot simpler with normal and high density. And the animations are highly realistic. Water alone, it uses real physics. Break a dam, and you’ll have a flood.

The thing is, things are unlocked based on city population. Even something a simple as placing trees down. Perhaps, your residences don’t want trees? Or the game feels you don’t really need them ’till later on.
There’s things that it doesn’t have that Sim City does, such as realtime lighting, natural disasters, more types of interchanges for roads… but what it lacks, it makes up for and then some, by having every person in your city have a name and figure out where they live and go over their budget. It also has an option that you can label certain areas of your city, to be Districts. With this, you have control over things like no smoking, no pets, martial law if required. Things like that.
Even little details, the game pulls off all the stops. Such as when an Ambulance shows up, you see people run in, and then them with a stretcher coming out. Things like this just add more depth into city life.

It even goes further than that! Oh yes. The game supports mods! Even cheat mods, such is having unlimited cash that never goes down. So all you have to worry about is keeping your citizens happy, instead of your finances in check.
It also has Steam Workshop support built into the game(as in, you can view it ingame), where you can download custom buildings and place them right into your game, with no muss or fuss. That is awesome.

It looks fun. It feels fun. And I feel I should really get myself this game. And hearing it has tutorials, I..I really want this, and I’m going to get it and do a review, using my first city as a base.

Currently, the game is $30 (full price). There’s a Deluxe version for $10 more, that gives you custom buildings from around the world that you can slap into your city, plus the soundtrack. And really, get this game! This is what Sim City should had been!

I’ve been told before I joined Guild Wars 2, to play as a Warrior. Little did mfish know, I wanted a simple, easy to understand rotation (also with not a lot of effort put into it).
Ranger, so far, has been that class. Yet I’ve learned now, there’s no real “true soloing class”. People actually hate Ranger for some odd reason. With Ranger, I can range a target (or I can choose to go up and personal and CLANG my target to death with my Greatsword.

I thought for sure, I would be able to do the same as a Warrior. And also have heavier armor to protect me better. Well, I can still do that. I can use a Broadsword, and I can use a Bow or a Gun. Survivability… that’s a different story. Without a pet, I have to really be pumping the DPS out.
I try, yet I feel so… squishy at times. Seeing how fast my Health drops, and going down constantly is not fun.

Asking for help… why do I even bother, when I never do the advice? This one reply, said to go with an axe & shield/Greatsword combo. That I must learn when to bash with said shield, dodge a lot. Use this. Use that. Don’t do this. Do that. Ugh. So much WORK! So much EFFORT!! D:<
By the way, I'm serious. This is why I don't play Melee chars. On top of that, I can't go with that setup if I was to take down that undead dragon at the end of the game. There were several times when we were told to use ranged attacks.

I really don't know what I'm going to do with my Warrior. I.. wanted him to keep Tybalt's bravery alive. Yet I'm having a very hard time doing so. And also… he looks nothing like Tybalt.
*sigh* The game looks so simple, that you can play any class. But to master said class, it’s an entirely different story…

MMORPGs can be fun, and can also be downright frustrating. As in, they’re unlike other games. They have no ending. They have no “Hey, I’m done!….. What do I do now?” empty feeling as a Single Player game would, that has freeplay after the last boss fight.
Yet mastering the damn thing, is as painful as … something really painful without going all too graphic. Put your hand in an active blender? Manually extract a tooth out of your mouth (without letting a professional Dentist do it for you)? Watching some rich kid on Youtube throw a perfectly good iPhone in a tank of acid, just to see what happens? Anything like that. They(RPG’s) are a bitch to master, for me.
Not knowing what gear I need, the correct rotation, the correct buffs, the correct place to be… why fucking bother with all of that shit?! This is a reason why I don’t join Guilds.
I guess I’m suffering from NPE (New Player Experience). It’s a urban dictionary term, to describe a player who refuses to listen to advice on how to play better(even though they suck and need help).

This is why I ignore “How to play better in WoW” videos. They are complicated as hell. So much math. So much… learning. FUCK THAT! And I’m NOT being sarcastic here!
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EDIT: I managed to get ahold of mfish after an event on the MRT that I was a part of. His realist answer was “well, Guild Wars 2 is designed for team play. Sorry”. I..I dunno what to do now.
Yet if it’s “designed for team play”, then how come I managed to solo to 80 as a Ranger? Maybe because I’m used to Ranged classes, and not Melee? Maybe I just lucked out. I dunno.
Though it was a 95% solo. I still did that Level 30 dungeon run. And of course needing help with my final Level 80 Story quest.

This is not a comparison post of GW2 VS WoW, this is my own opinion of this game. I wanted to do this after getting my first Level 80. So let’s get to the lists;

Liked;
-Dungeons. No group leaders. No ‘have to be a certain class’ thing.
-No “Can’t do that while moving” nagging messages. Infact the game never nags you.
-Beautiful map design.
-Believable swamps.
-Having the ability to go to low level areas to help you level up, as if you were that level.
-Being able to kill a dragon of the Level 60 story quest. Turns out, that wasn’t an Elder Dragon. That was one of Zhaitan’s MANY high ranking minions.
-The personal instances (like the ‘Home” instance).
-Patches don’t require the servers to be taken down for maintenance.
-Having freedom of the way you want to level (such as being able to go up a level by using a tome).
-Easy to understand stats. No complicated crap like Agility, Mastery, Critical Strike Chances. None of that crap. Just base stats.
-Very friendly community.
-Not every enemy can slow you down. You can keep on running.
-Being able to swim to Orr from the North coast.
-No Fatigue. You simply get a warning about a strong current that will push you back if you go too far.
-Gear doesn’t get damaged with use, and repairing gear (after being defeated) is free.
-The satisfying, and hilarious *CLAAAANG* sound when whacking someone with a Killing Blow using a Greatsword.
-No dueling system (hopefully it isn’t added in the EP). It makes hanging out in cities and towns so much better.
-Your currency (and your bank) is shared between characters. This means your Gold, Gems, and Karma.
-NO FUCKING MONTHLY FEES!! 😀

Disliked…;
-The “this map doesn’t have a lot of players. We’re closing it down whenever if you like it or not” popups. You do get a nice buff, but its frequency, and the fact it can reset events I just did, pisses me off.
-No way to check my bag space without actually going into my inventory.
-Frequent respawning mobs, especially in closed quarters combat.
-Forced 3rd person story dialog, and they’re barely looking at eachother.
-Complicated crafting system.
-Soloing dungeons is not possible, due to the level scaling.
-It’s hard to get gold after hitting Level 80.
-Not many anti-social options for gearing once Level 80 (no Mr. Robot for GW2).
-No custom chat channels. You’re stuck with the defaults. Thankfully, you can switch off an annoying chat channel (like Map chat).
-No option to bypass the launcher.

Neutral:
-Unable to reach certain areas of the world map that claim are there but physically aren’t (like some of the ‘invisible’ islands to the South). The painted map can sometimes be a bit deceiving.
-No option of randomly choosing a name when creating a new character.
-Zones with no pathways. Yet this is also a good thing as well, as you can go your own way. The bad thing, is I don’t know where Heart quests are.
-Not all NPC speech shows up in chat.

It even ended with credits rolling, while ingame! Hilarious. I’ll get to this later. Completed my final Story quest as a Human Ranger. The last one was pretty punishing. But killing Zhaitan was worth all the hell I went through.

It was pretty long, yet not as long as the Level 60 one. Or was it as long? Actually, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, the really punishing parts were probably… getting to the Story quest. With most of the Waypoints contested (controlled by Risen), and also being in areas I’ve never been to, I had to fight to them all. There was a lot of screaming at my computer when things didn’t go my way.
Getting swarmed by undead is never fun, and very ragey.

There was one part where we had to raid these undead pirate ships. We(me and my NPC party) were sitting on a rowboat, getting ready to board the first ship. Right at the start, the undead teleported right infront of me, and we got swarmed by undead and I died.. a LOT. I died so much that half my gear was broken. And on top of that, I had to go eat right in the middle of an instance. Thankfully, the Risen stayed where they are to allow me to eat in peace.

The last part is when I was literally about to just rage-uninstall the game, all because I couldn’t solo it. But getting to that final Story quest wasn’t fun. It was a challenge. There were Risen, and catapults everywhere. All they did was piss me off. The 3rd time, I just had enough and tried to range the undead, but those catapults, yo! Managed to destroy one, then made a mad dash for the mini-portal that leads me there. Barely survived.

I noticed it was a dungeon, but I thought for sure it could still be solo’d. I was wrong. So very wrong. It was nowhere soloable to me. There’s even a game mechanic that makes it impossible to do so. And that mechanic is trying to go for the first power orb for this zeppelin to take the fight to Zhaitan.
There’s this small group of Risen, with two of them being Elites. I manage to kill one in a minute, only for it to respawn 30 seconds later. It was nothing but a DPS speed run. Yet even if I was able to kill everyone, that door can’t open without another person.

I feared this would happen. There’s just no way, they would allow me to solo an Elder Dragon. Yet I was also so fucking pissed. I read, that you can still do the final quest via soloing. But that mechanic proves I cannot.
I went on the forum to complain about it. About five minutes later, I get a response that says, others too are pissed that this is gated behind a dungeon. So I’m not alone.

To make a long story short (too late), I got a group together and we did this Story quest/dungeon. I see now why it’s not soloable, even after doing that unsoloable door mechanic. There’s more Elites and really powerful enemies (it is a dungeon afterall), and it only gets harder and harder.

The fight was similar to gunship battle of trying to take down Deathwing, except with even more things going on (and not requiring a Raid group). Also, the gunship we were on, was actually MOVING. You could see it moving, while we where attacking! The coolest part, was when we ascended into the clouds while fighting Risen on the deck.

With that, we had to fight both of Zhaitan’s dragon champions; Fafnarn the Heartslayer, and Horrogos the Soulbreaker. While also being swarmed by more Risen.

Also, there was no Green Jesus Orc stealing my thunder (or a ‘Dragon Soul’). We had to be the ones to bring the main dragon down. We and the Pact working together as one.
Seeing Zhaitan for the first time… holy fuck. Just… HOLY FUCK!! That thing wasn’t a dragon, it was a flying monstrosity!! It had two sets of wings, and its face… ugh. I got several pictures of it flying over the new, humongous gunship we were on (our old one got destroyed).
The first fight, we had to deal with it spewing black AoE damage on the deck, and Risen mobs. All while protecting one of the Asura to power a mega laser. Was pretty wild having the screen shake as Zhaitan flew past.

And then we used these laser cannons and DPS’d the fucker to hell. It felt good, yet just like Deathwing, we never made sure it was truly dead.
And then the celebrations happened back at Fort Trinity. But I didn’t really feel like celebrating. I really wanted Tybalt to be there. We never gave him a proper burial, or even a memorial. Instead, everyone was cheering at me. It just feels like the game gave likable characters the boot. Or, they felt you were over them and ready to move on (that is, if you’re not overly emotional).
Just felt like everyone forgot about him. Well, I will honor him in my own way with my alt.

And as I said at the beginning, I actually saw credits roll while still ingame. I could still interact with others. I could still walk. I just had credits going up my screen. It was hilarious. Credits in an MMORPG, like that.

A lot of things happened in the past 48 hours. I’m now literally standing on a surefire way to reach Level 80. Yet… is it right to use it?
I’ve collected two of these “level up quick” tomes. Yes, legit ingame tomes. Very rare, yet very “cheaty”. Something I would never see in WoW (since they hate things that make leveling easier).

Yet an ironic thing, that isn’t the case once you hit Level 70. There’s only one place you can go, and there’s no Heart quests. It has completely shifted to defeating the undead-belching, Lich King wannabe dragon known as Zhaitan. No one knows of the dragon’s history, or where it came from. All we know is, he wants to also be like Deathwing and wipe out all life on Tyria. Yet he hardly has to do anything. He has his single-minded undead minions to do his bidding, who are called the Risen.

How he emerged is slightly similar to Deathwing in Cata. So who copied who’s idea?
So anyway, as I said (got too involved in talking about said dragon) there’s no Heart quests. Leveling up is based on random events; events that literally require a group of real people to complete (even though they don’t show ‘[Group Event]’ before the title).
There was this one, that was really… really taking it out on me. Had to defend the workers to fix these three cannons from an endless horde of Risen. At the time, I didn’t know where in the hell the horde were coming from. So I stayed on top with everyone else. This would prove to be a fatal mistake for any Ranger. Aka, Veteran mobs spawning on it.
I got swarmed, and overwhelmed. Got defeated a few times (even with a Guardian (another player) protecting me). Very disheartening.

I finally learned to just snipe them with my longbow as they go up the stairs. I had a much better attempt by doing this, and finally completed it… only to fail the next part of this event. According to it, I have to sink these three Risen ships, while also protecting these five subs. I see three crosshairs under the Risen ships, and thinking “Ok, so where’s the cannon, so I can do it?”
As you can see, I was very clueless on how to do the fight. I also thought this was my only way to access the Ruins of Orr. And when you fail, you got to retake the base from the Risen……then repeat the same thing.
I… I was on the verge of just giving up. Which is pretty ironic, since I’m supposed to be the Hero and be brave during the Story quests.

I then literally begged for help to complete the event. I got no response. Again, disheartening. Then I just had a thought about bravery; the bravery Tybalt didn’t have until he met me. Yet this also wasn’t just about bravery, it was about frustration. The “I don’t want to do this AGAIN!!” type. I wasn’t scared.
So I went back, thinking “Ok, so I have to do this again… fine. Maybe this time, the game will tell me what to do.”
I saw other people when I started, and noticed how well the cannons were being protected. I thought for sure, we got this. And we did. Then when the second part came, I frantically asked for advice on the fight. All I got was “dont die”. That’s real helpful… not.

Again, I failed it. I got hysterical. Then someone told me to just ignore it, as they too have the same issue. So I wondered “Is this even required to get to Orr?” I asked, and was told no, that I can easily access it at anytime. Wow. That.. changes things.
So I swam all the way to the shores of Orr with no problem. Here, there’s no life. Risen everywhere. I literally have to cut a path through the undead, just to get anywhere. Occasionally, a looming shadow flies over me. It seems Zhaitan knows I’m here. He knows his end is coming by the end of my arrows, so that’s why he’s throwing everything he can after me. Bring it on.
Most of the waypoints here are contested (controlled by the Risen). Some, only become available during a specific event.
There’s only three on the entire island, that are accessible.

Orr is similar to the other area, except all of these are marked as Group Events. It even mentions it.
Speaking of Group Events, I actually solo’d a really big one (barely) in another zone. Yet this zone was pissing me off. So, there’s this event to recapture a base used by these frog people (called the Hylac). I do so, and then I get that annoying message that the map instance I’m on is closing, and I have to get to a more populated one.
I say OK to it, and the event resets on me. WTF?! I’ve later learned, never to do this near any event area (even if it’s not active). Obviously, this is a bug. Yet it has never been confirmed.

By the way, I also finally managed to avenge Tybalt (and get my, and the Order some closure) by killing the Risen Commander in Whisperwill Bogs. Even at Level 72 (was at the time), I was able to do it. Before, I couldn’t get the guy to show up.
I ran around, waiting for him to spawn in. I then moved away for awhile, then went back and then he finally showed up, and now he’s dead.
He actually looked like Tybalt, which was a bit scary. But I still killed him. It feels good to get revenge. Now I can focus on bringing Zhaitan down.

Yet this still doesn’t answer a lingering question, on how to approach 80. As I type this, it looks I’m 37% into 79 already.
I really thought about just using one of these two Tomes of Intelligence. They say they can raise you up one player level. As I said, a “get out of leveling card”. It just feels very cheaty, yet if it was cheating, it wouldn’t be in the game.
I guess you’re supposed to look at this in two ways;
1. It’s useful for leveling alts.
2. This is a “either you use it, or you don’t. We don’t care. We gave you the option, it’s up to you if you choose to use it.” thing. Literally, it is.

I still have the option of using lower level zones to help me (due to having my level lowered). So there’s my “legit” way. Or I can use a Tome of Intelligence, and instantly hit 80 to take down Zhaitan. Decisions decisions. I was hoping the decision would be made for me either by the community, or just by sleeping on it. Both proved useless.
If I do it “legit”, I’ll be able to unlock as I level. But if I do it “cheaty”, I won’t feel I’ve learned anything. Yet I’ll skip having to deal with potentially bugged quests (due to mechanics).

I’ve decided to do it to the cheaty way. One thing I noticed, I’m still “leveling”, yet I hit 80. Odd. I asked later on, and was told this is no bug; this is now the way you can get Traits to further improve your char. Interesting.

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EDIT: Zhaitan is now “dead” (well, once undead now re-dead), and Tybalt has fully been avenged. I’ll be making two GW2-related blog posts. The first one is about what “fun” I went through of my Level 80 Story mission, and the second will be what I like and dislike about the game.
The second one will follow with my first alt being created.

They also finally fucking fixed the random player voices coming from your character bug! That thing was driving me insane. “Assistance please!” when I’m selling stuff. Just.. wow. So annoying.